The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (39 page)

He stiffened as the red dot swept past his chest. ‘
Doctor!
’

‘Sorry,’ Marco said, aiming down the walkway. ‘Look.’

The row of cells had awoken–a shitload of corpses creeping from the doorways. The ghoulish criminals packed the walk, twenty, thirty dead men shuffling towards him single-file. Marco set the laser on a corpse in front, an Asian male with both ears missing.

Then it got worse–strangled moans sounding up the stairs.

The dead were ascending from the first floor.

Not so bad, right?
Marco thought, the sarcasm bitter-tasting. The pistol palpitated in his grip.
Hundreds of corpses, closing in from both ends. Like a trash compactor with teeth.

And fourteen bullets in the M9.

‘Maybe,’ he said to Wu, ‘we should’ve hitched a ride with the bad guys.’

With lacklustre hope, Marco considered the balcony rail.
Could jump like Roger
, he thought. Then frowned.
And land on a hundred corpses below.

Yeah. Next idea. Quick
…

On the walkway the dead had advanced, just five cells
ahead. A grim line slithering at him like a snake with multiple faces, shrivelled, scaly, inhuman.

To his left was the gloomy cell, a shadowy box with two rumpled beds and a metal toilet. No sanctuary there–just a sure spot to get trapped and die.

Except
…

The beds.

Now we’re talking.
Encouraged, he planted the red laser sight on the lead corpse and punched its face in with a bullet. Slop spurted sideways through the holes where its ears were missing, a nearly comical effect; without waiting for it to fall, Marco pinched the trigger again, bagging the next corpse in line, too. He kept firing. The red dot made it easy, inappropriately fun, like a carnival game–bam, bam, bam, until he’d splashed the walkway with another six kills.
Enough
, he thought and forced himself to stop.

That’ll buy a few more seconds.

‘C’mon!’ he hollered to Wu and ducked into the cell. The stench inside ambushed him, like spoiled meat marinating in piss, and sure enough he noted the toilet overflowing with a sloppy red chum, and he gagged, eyes flooding hot.

‘You ever…’ He coughed and had to stop and spit. Working fast, he threw back a ratty blanket on the bed and almost puked again; the mattress was a thick squirming mound of cockroaches, shells shiny and wet as they wriggled. Repulsed, he grabbed the mattress by its stitched edges. ‘Ever play football?’ he asked Wu.

From the cell door, Wu watched him as if he were mad. ‘Doctor—’

‘Me neither,’ Marco said, and yanked the mattress from the rusted bedsprings.

Roaches pelted his face, hit the concrete floor, scuttled under the bed frame. In his fingers the fabric was damp, soaked with roach shit–padded thin, not much wider than
a bedroll, but it would work. ‘I wasn’t tough enough,’ he squawked, battling another wave of sickness. ‘Tried when I was ten, lasted only two practices. Cried at both.’

He thrust the mattress at Wu. Surprised, Wu accepted it in his hands. Marco wheeled back to the next bed, seized the second mattress for himself. Outside on the walkway, the corpses had tottered into view, nearing the door.

‘Time for blocking drills,’ Marco announced.

He flashed Wu an uncertain smile–and then, before he could begin to question his own sanity, shoved past the sergeant and out the cell.

On the walkway he carried the mattress before him like a full-body shield. To his right the corpses from the staircase had reached the top. With a silly high-pitched whoop, as if he really were a ten-year-old boy again, he charged left instead, towards the walkway convicts, his shoulder squared against the mattress. Four steps, five, and
fwump
, his lungs expelled air like paper bags popping as he rammed the first corpse–never seeing the dead man, registering only the smack of a body against the other side of the mattress. Pain drove deep into his shoulder.

Shit.
That hurt.

He rumbled forward, remembering why he’d quit football–
just don’t cry, okay?
–but the game plan worked. The corpse sprawled backwards, a sunken-chested male, and Marco steamrolled over it, high-stepping–another football drill he’d sucked at–to avoid the hands swiping crazily at his ankles. He’d barely recovered from the first hit when the second came, the next corpse in line, this time a glancing blow that spun the corpse into the walkway rail. As Marco passed, the rotting convict lunged at his unprotected neck…

… just as Wu blasted forward with his mattress and knocked the corpse on its ass.

Marco arched an eyebrow. ‘Good hit. You just made varsity.’

The bedding wobbled in his grip as a corpse struck the other side; he heard a hiss of fabric ripping and realised the dead man had bitten the mattress.

He tightened his hold.
Don’t drop it, or you’re fucked.

‘
Go!
’ he shouted.

He stormed forward, his weight centred low, pumping his legs as if he were pushing a car, and–
fwump
–bulldozed through the mattress-eating corpse, and then–
fwump–
the next corpse, and then the next, and the next, as dead convicts bounced and banged off the rail, unable to get at the tasty meat behind the padded shield. Following behind him, Wu dealt the finishing blows, bowling the dazed corpses flat. Marco hurdled over a wild tangle of dead arms and legs.

‘Almost there,’ he panted, half to Wu, half to himself.

Five cells to go, and the walkway would end. They could take the stairs down.

Three cells… two…

He pancaked the final corpse, a victory cry in his throat…

… his celebration fizzling as from the final cell lumbered the biggest goddamn corpse he’d ever seen. Four hundred pounds, wide as the goddamn walkway. Its head was a mountain of rolled fat, its chin covered with a thick, blood-dripping beard.

That’s not a beard
, Marco realised, recoiling with disgust even as he charged madly ahead. A dead rat hung from the mouth, gripped between the corpse’s teeth…

He barrelled into the giant. For an agonising instant his ribcage compacted like a fist, painfully tight around his lungs, and the mattress springs coiled under him–Wu barrelled against his back, and he was pinned for half a moment between the two mattresses like an absurd sandwich, ready
for eating–and then the fat corpse wobbled and toppled under him. Marco and Wu rolled across the blubbery mound, falling with it, tumbling to the free side of the walkway. The men hit the grating hard and came to a stop, sprawled atop their mattresses, gasping on the floor beside the obese male. It struggled to rise, the dead rat flopping on its chin.

Behind it, in the direction they’d just run, the walkway was choked full again as the corpses from the stairwell proceeded endlessly upward from the shadows.

Wu scrambled to his feet, gripping his shoulder. ‘Now what, Coach?’

‘Find the stairs down,’ Marco said. ‘C’mon, this way.’

They left the mattresses and ran, heading away from the dead. The walkway stretched another hundred feet, all clear; the cells had emptied, and the men reached the opposite end within seconds. The top of the next staircase beckoned downward.

‘See?’ Marco panted. ‘Easy.’

On the walkway, the corpses advanced, but he and Wu now had a clear escape route. They skipped down the stairs, well ahead of the crowd, and emerged on the ground floor at the far end of the cell block. The mezzanine was quiet. The original multitude of hungry convicts had exited, stalking the Horseman quad down the distant halls. The path here was safe. For now.

Wasting no time, the men trotted down the empty corridor. From behind, Marco heard the dead grumbling down the staircase in slow pursuit.
Stay quick,
he thought.
They won’t catch up. Just don’t attract others.
Despite his caution, his boots tramped conspicuously on the tiles, and Wu’s laboured breathing added an unwelcome backbeat.

Around the corner they discovered a trail of long-dried blood and smeared brown entrails. It led them fifty yards down the hall, then ended in a shredded guard’s uniform.

No body in the clothes, not even bones.

Somehow that was even creepier.

Finally, beyond that, a dark corridor broke away from the main block and ventured right. A metal plate screwed to the wall read:

BLOCK A

BLOCK B

INFIRMARY BLOCK

Pointing down the perpendicular hall.

‘We’re here?’ Marco said. He heard the doubt in his voice. As if he’d meant to say,
Is it too late to go back?

Just then he frowned, conscious of a familiar sound penetrating his thoughts. Growing louder. An engine…

‘They found us,’ he said simply.

Screeching like a speared pig, the Horseman quad skidded around the corner at the distant end of Cell Block B. It swerved, nearly sideswiping the wall, then immediately corrected itself and peeled towards Marco and Wu with a belch of charcoal smoke.

Big Skull’s chiselled face leered from the turret.
He sees me
, Marco thought.

‘Run,’ Wu urged, then fled into the corridor.

As Marco followed, he glimpsed the dead army flooding the cell block, hot behind the quad. One huge party–on its way to the infirmary.

He sprinted, scared as shit, down the connecting corridor. The passage was a long straight hall tethering the cell blocks to the medical ward–a windowless, unlit hall, and he felt like a mouse being swallowed down the throat of a black serpent. Wu’s shadow flitted ten feet in front, and Marco chased after it, off balance and bumbling, praying he wouldn’t bump into some dead thing hiding in the dark.

And then he saw something worse.

Oh shit.

His sweat turned to ice water on his skin.

Oh shit shit shit shit.

Steel bars blocked the corridor–a security checkpoint, the cage door shut. Wu lunged to the door first, grabbed hold and grappled the thick bars.

Then dropped his arms and cried out in frustration.

Locked.

Marco’s face drained. Slowly he turned and gazed back up the one-way corridor. A hundred yards out, the Horseman quad had turned down the entrance, rumbling through the dark, an ominous silhouette growing larger by the moment. And behind it…

… the dead followed.

Resurrected convicts jammed the lone exit, the only escape. An impenetrable mass of putrid, pus-smelling, blood-starved cadavers staggered down the corridor behind the quad, as if the Horsemen were leading a Halloween parade. Marco almost laughed–then almost vomited. Big Skull had just committed suicide but didn’t realise it yet.

And he’s taking us with him.

Marco sagged against the unbreakable door; the cold bars dug into his spine.

Dead end.

Pointless
, was all Marco could think. Pointless, to survive all the bullshit–the past three days, the past four years–to travel so far, and fight so hard, and then die here in a rank corridor in a prison four hundred miles from home, having accomplished absolutely fucking nothing. No Roger. No Danielle. Shit, he might as well’ve been torn apart on Day
One of the Resurrection and spared himself the trouble. Because
of course
this was going to end badly; he’d known so from the start. Jesus Christ, how had he ever convinced himself otherwise?